In this week’s Richmond Park byelection, Ukip and the Conservatives are backing Zac Goldsmith. Why can’t the parties of the left work together in the same way to oppose Brexit and Tory hegemony?

At 7am on Thursday, polling stations will open in an upmarket corner of west London for the Richmond Park byelection. This odd affair is entirely in keeping with a year of unexpected political events.

They might be the party of government, but the Conservatives are not putting up a candidate. The frontrunner is a self-styled “independent”: Zac Goldsmith, the unfathomably wealthy, roll-up-smoking Tory environmentalist who was until recently Richmond Park’s Conservative MP and the party’s candidate for London mayor.